Sharing Space With the Birds

The Audubon Society’s Christmas bird count in Orange County keeps setting records, and Gerald L. Tolman is not sure whether it is in spite or or because of urbanization.

Last year coastal Orange County would have tied Freeport, Tex., with a winning count in the United States of 215 species, but headquarters disallowed a ringneck pheasant on grounds that somebody must have imported the bird. This year the record may hang on whether a black-billed magpie, rare in Orange County but common in the Central Valley, is accepted.

Tolman is a Fountain Valley High School teacher. He raised homing pigeons when a child, and collected caged birds when first married. “Then I decided I would rather see them in the wild,” he recalled. He has been a serious bird watcher since a friend gave him Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to Western Birds” in 1969. He has been part of the Orange County count since 1971, and now is the man in charge--one of an army of 42,000 volunteers, coast to coast and from Alaska to Costa Rica, who are doing the 89th Christmas count.

The number of species in Orange County has continued to climb, much to Tolman’s surprise. Some species, notably pintail ducks, have greatly declined as farmland and marshes have been paved over. But others have adapted to the increased supply of winter food provided by the extensive landscaping that has come with the new homes, with more species wintering over rather than migrating, inflating the winter count of species. This year’s tally turned up seven species of warblers instead of the usual three--Audubon, Townsend’s and Orange Crown. “Orioles also are sticking around,” he said. “But I suppose the total number of birds is about the same.”

About 70 volunteers participated last Sunday, despite the rain, in counting birds in the northeast part of the county. They tabulated 164 species, including the magpie. Next Sunday, New Year’s Day, they will cover the coast from Little Corona to the northern end of Bolsa Chica. The coastal survey also includes an offshore check made possible by Sea Scouts. From a boat the ornithologists usually spot black-vented and sooty shearwaters--and, if they are lucky, short-tailed and pink-footed shearwaters as well. “Normally they are not visible from the shore,” Tolman told us.

He is a living example of how gripping the hobby can be. He has traveled to Australia, Africa and Latin America in search of birds, but the snow was not heavy enough to keep him from logging some birds not seen at lower elevations--including mountain chickadees and a hairy woodpecker.

The Audubon Society started the count on Christmas Day in 1900 as a protest against the practice of holiday bird-shooting sprees. Now there are 1,5000 counts, including the two in Orange County, each covering a circular area 15 miles in diameter. The resulting census helps people calculate what their presence is doing to the fragile environment that they share with the birds.